Nature's Call to Cover the Subway Sounds

NEW YORK (WCBS 880)  -- Your next subway ride may be a bit more relaxing.

WCBS Reporter Marla Diamond takes a listen at 96th and Broadway where the rumbling subways will be replaced by soothing sounds.

The chirping birds, buzzing bees and other nature sounds is part of a unique art installation that's part of the station's overhaul which will be completed in 2010.

"Stainless steel flowers, they'll be hanging 12 feet above the turnstiles, so that it will give the feeling...in an abstract way of a field of a veil of flowers," saidArts for Transit Director Sandra Bloodworth.

The sounds are experimental, Bloodworth says the screech of the subway may very well drown them out.

The New York Times reports the sounds, broadcast on a loop by hidden speakers in the above-ground headhouse, would be one component of an art installation intended for the station that draws on the ideas and iconography of Asian pop art and contemporary graphic design.